In a remade New Orleans school system, frustration lingers over finding a place for every student

Sue Bordelon's 17-year-old son C.J. faces many obstacles, some unavoidable, others man-made. He has autism and fragile health. He can't walk more than 20 paces without his wheelchair. In class, he has trouble focusing on his lessons.

View full sizeTimes-Picayune archiveAnother enrollment season has come and gone in New Orleans without any kind of central clearinghouse to make sure every student can find a place in the city's school system.

And it was no help, Bordelon said, when the charter school C.J. was attending last year forced him to leave. Having struggled to find a place for him in years past, Bordelon said she ran into more resistance last spring when she responded to fliers advertising openings at a traditional public school. She said she heard familiar excuses from administrators about a lack of staff and turned to third-party advocates to finally win a place for C.J., who spent September at home while they put pressure on the school to let him in.

Since then, another enrollment season has come and gone in New Orleans without any kind of central clearinghouse to make sure every student can find a place in the city's school system.

Last fall the state's top education official, Paul Pastorek, promised to establish a central enrollment system as a means of ensuring that special needs students aren't shunned. But the state's Recovery School District, which oversees most of the public schools here, won't have anything up and running until next year. Officials from the Orleans Parish School Board, which oversees the other handful of schools, say plans for a citywide system that covers both districts are still in the "conversation" phase. And advocates for special needs students aren't convinced that whatever system materializes will go far enough.

"There are people in the Recovery School District who really want to do what's right for the kids," Bordelon said. But, she added, "It's so difficult to navigate through the system; it's just so fractured. And when you're busy with a special needs kid, to make time to be arguing and waiting for calls, it's very, very difficult."

It is not only special needs students who find the process trying. Because New Orleans public schools are now open to students across the city, rather than a specific neighborhood, the burden -- and opportunity -- falls on parents or guardians to pick the right school for their child and get an application in by the April deadline.

The system is designed with free-market principles in mind. Schools that do well are rewarded with more students and the state money that comes with them. And indeed, by most accounts, city schools have improved markedly since before Hurricane Katrina, when the school system had a reputation as one of the worst in the country.

But as in many private markets, it is sometimes the hardest-to-serve customers who have the most trouble finding service.

View full sizeJohn White, the Recovery School District's new superintendent, agrees that a central office should play some role in placing students.

Take a private industry like broadband. People in rural, sparsely populated areas often have fewer options for high-speed Internet access because it doesn't make financial sense for service providers to extend expensive fiber optic lines to places with few potential customers. As a result, the government has had to commit federal dollars to expand coverage in some parts of the country.

Just like broadband companies, schools are sometimes reluctant to go the extra mile to make sure they are serving everyone, critics say.

Even with the extra state money that goes to schools based on the number of special-needs students they serve, it can be a challenge.

For instance, to truly meet C.J.'s needs, instructors would have to come to his house because a recent surgery has left him unable to make it to school, Bordelon said. So the question arises whether government should play more of a role in ensuring students like C.J. are served.

It's an especially important question, considering nearly three quarters of New Orleans school children now attend charter schools, which are funded by taxpayer dollars but operate independently.

About 6.7 percent of charter students in the Recovery School District are classified as special needs -- excluding those with speech or language impairments, generally considered easier to deal with -- compared with 9.4 percent at schools that are still run directly by the RSD.

This disparity is not universal. Some charter schools have high special-needs populations, and in fact, the school with the highest proportion of special-needs students is Arthur Ashe, which is run by the charter group FirstLine.

Even so, the perception that charter schools aren't serving the neediest students, that they "cream" off those who are easier to teach in order to boost test scores, has become a flashpoint in the national debate over education reform.

Shirley said charter operators discussed the idea of central enrollment at a meeting last week. There is some unease among the charters about ceding too much control to the district, she said. After all, one major impetus behind charters is to give school leaders the chance to run things without the meddling of a central office. A centralized system for placing students is seen by some as "the camel getting his nose in the tent," she said. "Today it's enrollment, tomorrow, they want to run our curriculum."

But Shirley and many charter operators acknowledge the need, especially for students arriving in the city after the official enrollment period ends, as about 1,500 did this school year.

"It's not right for someone to come to New Orleans after enrollment takes place and have to pick up the phone to call every school in the city to find a place," she said.

John White, the RSD's new superintendent, agrees that a central office should play some role in placing students, even if charters remain otherwise autonomous.

But he cautioned that the issue of enrollment can't be separated from the broader planning process for New Orleans schools. That process will play out during the next few months as the state and city school boards consider revisions to the city's so-called "master plan," a framework for deciding which schools will end up in which buildings across the city.

White said that framework will have to consider which schools are capable of handling the neediest students. Geographically, they can't all be clustered in one place or another, he said.

Darryl Kilbert, superintendent of the Orleans Parish School Board, agrees on the need for a comprehensive plan. Kilbert argues it is unrealistic to think that every school in the city will be equipped to deal with every type of need. Instead, the city should be broken up into separate quadrants, with schools in each area capable of handling certain impairments, he said.

As for coordination between the OPSB and the RSD, Kilbert said there have been conversations about a single enrollment system, but nothing formal has been agreed upon.

Kevin Guitterrez, the RSD's second-in-command, said the district hopes to have an electronic system in place next year that will allow officials to track which schools have open slots midyear.

The district has been using a $50,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation to study how it should work.

But Guitterrez concedes that details have yet to be worked out. It's not clear for instance, if parents will continue to apply to individual schools at the beginning of each year's enrollment period, or submit a common application to the RSD with their top choices.

Eden Heilman, an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the group wants to see the district tracking individual students to make sure they don't fall off the map. The center has a lawsuit pending against state officials for what they claim is discrimination against disabled students, and Heilman says they still receive calls "daily" about students who can't find a school.

"We are unaware of any real reform efforts," Heilman said.

Bordelon is one of the parents who have joined the lawsuit, which is the reason she won't mention the specific schools involved in her son's case.

Without seeking help from the Southern Poverty Law Center, she says, "I don't think C.J. would be in school right now."